Mark Sterling, the Director of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Urban Design program, was recently named a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) in recognition of his outstanding achievement to design excellence, scholarship, and distinguished service to the profession.

Fellows will be inducted at the College of Fellows Convocation ceremony at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto on October 29 during the annual RAIC Festival of Architecture, which takes place October 26-30.

An award-winning architect, urban designer and professional planner, Sterling is a leading thinker on new approaches to compact urban form and an innovator in exploring intelligent development scenarios through a variety of approaches to digital visualization. In addition to his role at the Daniels Faculty, he is Principal of Acronym Urban Design and Planning, where his experience in city building at multiple scales, combined with his ability to bring diverse groups of people together, make him a strong guide to the designers who collaborate to build better communities. 

Sterling is currently leading several major intensification projects, including Toronto Community Housing’s Lawrence Heights Redevelopment Plan, a new 100-acre neighbourhood design that includes incremental rebuilding of existing social housing stock while rebalancing the transportation network for pedestrians, cyclists, and current and future transit facilities.  He has also been leading teams developing strategies to increase density around proposed transit corridors in Markham and Newmarke in response to Ontario’s Places to Grow legislation.  On the West Don Lands Public Realm Plan, he is the urban design lead working with Waterfront Toronto to transform a previously underused 80-acre site into new public space that encourages active transportation.

For the new Steeles West Station, a new station on the extension to the Spadina subway line, Sterling led a review to investigate development potential around the new station that included balancing the goals and requirements of multiple stakeholders including the TTC, York Region Transit/VIVA, GO Transit York University, The City of Toronto and the City of Vaughan. Experienced in transit-oriented environmental assessments, his team also provided urban design studies along Toronto’s waterfront for the TTC from Union Station to Exhibition Place and from Dufferin to Roncesvalles. 

Sterling’s experience includes the University of Toronto at Mississauga Campus Master Plan, OCAD’s Capital Master Plan, and the Port Lands Implementation Strategy for Waterfront Toronto. He led urban design components in “Making Waves: Principles for Toronto’s Waterfront,” City avenue studies for Lake Shore Boulevard and O’Connor Road, the Highway 7 Land Use Futures Study in Vaughan, and the subsequent York Region Urban Design Futures study that accompanied new rapid transit proposals.  As Director of Architecture and Urban Design for the former City of Toronto, Sterling led the development of civic improvement projects and new urban design and planning frameworks for several of the city’s most important districts. 

Sterling is actively involved in his profession as a founding member of the Inaugural Urban Design Advisory Panel for the City of Mississauga, a member of the City of Ottawa Urban Design Panel, a jury member of the Mississauga Urban Design Awards, and former vice-chairman of the Toronto Society of Architects.  He has been an adjunct member of what is now the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto since 1987.